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No room for sentiment
Page 9
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Reading ofiveco's decision to stop building Seddon Atkinson trucks at Oldham (just two weeks after MAN decided to switch all ERF assembly to Germany) it's tempting to paraphrase Oscar Wilde's most formidable creation, Lady Bracknell: "To lose one UK truck manufacturing plant, Mr Bull, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness..." Transferring assembly from Oldham and Madrid clearly makes sense to an accountant. Unfortunately it doesn't soften the blow for the 155 production workers who stand to lose their jobs. It's also a sad reflection on how MAN and Iveco have been unable to sustain a viable UK manufacturing base. Contrast that with Paccar. Production lines at the Leyland plant it bought in 1998 are humming. It recently won the prestigious Paccar award for "best quality of any Paccar plant in the world" and, despite opening 21 years ago, Management Today and Cranfield University voted it "Britain's Best Engineering Factory in 2000". How come they got it so right? It's obviously a sad moment in the history of UK truck manufacturer—but whether we like it or not, this is a global business. If it's cheaper to build a truck in Spain rather than Lancashire the closure was probably inevitable, never mind the loss of heritage and tradition. As one wag said: "There's no future in history." That's clearly true for British truck building.